Mr Barton arrived rather late due to another engagement elsewhere in the city and due to the rain, but he did, at last, arrive and several of the ladies present, many of whom had grown-up children, felt their pulses flutter and their faces flush as Mr Barton took to the platform. His magnificent stature and his smooth, clean-shaven cheeks, his boyish fair hair and his clear and ardent voice was enough to stir the most unromantic heart, young and not so young. And when he exhorted them, ‘Ladies, you cannot vote in Tuesday’s referendum, but it would be a great thing if you could influence your husbands, brothers and friends,’ they applauded and it did not, in that moment, appear an injustice to call on their help while denying them the vote.

But later, when Mr Barton has gone, when they have made their way home, dashing over puddles, to make their husband’s tea, will they pause to consider what has been asked of them? Eleanor wondered, will they feel just a little cheated?

Otherwise she thought very little. The applause swelled and rippled about her but did not touch her. She observed the hat worn by the young lady in front of her, a very wide-brimmed hat adorned by an ostrich feather that hung limply and was ruined by the rain. She noticed Mrs Rothe, seated beside her, pulling at the fingers of her gloves. She thought: If we lived separately, Alasdair and I, I shall be no better than Mrs Parkes—pitied, talked about, cruel. She thought: Shall I be forced, then, to go and live quietly in some other place? She thought of Balmain, where her father’s stone cottage had once stood. But she had left all of that. She had climbed her way out of it and she would not go back.

People would find out. One person already knew, for they had sent her the note. And the cook, Mrs Flynn, she must know.

Then Mrs Flynn, too, must go.

Eleanor understood that this was just the start.

The ladies around her jumped to their feet and clapped enthusiastically, and Eleanor also rose to her feet, or her shadow did, an echo of Eleanor Dunlevy, whose face was turned towards the gentleman on the platform but whose eyes stared down a very long and very dark tunnel.

She left then, pushing past the ladies beside her and walking out of the hall, and Mrs Rothe, who was rather taken with Mr Barton though she had dismissed his charms not half an hour earlier, did not notice until after the meeting that Mrs Dunlevy had gone.

In the foyer of the town hall Eleanor saw Cecily Pyke and one of her daughters, not Marguerite, shaking umbrellas and hats and full of the excitement of a journey made in the rain.